Overheard in the house!

Self: This blog thing is getting on my nerves!

Better half: Its your blog. You started it.

Yes, I thought that this was going to be meaningful!

(Scornfully) Meaningful? How?

Oh, I dont know, I just expected better feedback, not just people reading and moving on. Of course a few say things like ”well done, keep it up”. But it gets highly boring after a while.

Oh, you give them thoughtful, challenging ideas which wake them from their slumber and make them comment, is that it?

(Sheepishly) Not quite, but I did do a lot of writing.

And for that they owe you a living! Hah.

Well, I did think that writing would be fun.

Isnt it?

Yes, but..

Whoever said hosting a blog was fun? You have fun while writing. Then you post. You have now had your fun. Now its upto the reader to have fun or not..

So where does that leave me?

You want to be left? I can do something about it!

No, no, no that’s not what I meant. Am I achieving something at all?

So tell them new things.

New things? But that’s what a paper or a magazine does!

Oh, so now you think just because something’s in a paper, everybody would have read it? (Nastily) So now this magazine your good friend Pervez brought 20 kms from his home to show you one week ago does not have anything to interest you?

But I haven’t read it yet!

So is this how you treat your friends and their loving gestures?

He did mention that it had something interesting!

So, if a magazine left by your bedside for a week which you did not read contains something interesting, you think the world would have seen it and everybody knows all about it except you?

(Sheepishy) If you put it that way…

So find out what’s interesting and tell them about it.

But I didn’t write about it and I did that kind of blog post already!

Don’t I know that! You have been sulking so long that that single blog type post got more views than all your creative writing.

Is it so obvious?

Hah!

Tongue in chick!

This Rann is for the Birds!

Being a pundit, Chitrapur Saraswat to boot,  I could’nt resist placing Subbu’s tongue in cheek introduction to his post about a fabulous birding trip to Kutch. Enjoy….

The first lesson I learnt in Kutch is that a good pair of tits is very hard to come by, and you could spend the better part of an evening looking high and (occasionally) low for them! Adesh had promised to show us the endemic Whitenaped Tits, but the birds were playing their cards very close to their chests. Our local guide Mohammedbhai, however, regarded them as his bosom buddies,……

http://green-indians.blogspot.com/2009/02/this-rann-is-for-birds.html

Way to go, Subbu!

Wetlanding with WII

As I walked up the paved road for my first glimpse of the architecturally crafted buildings of the Wildlife Institute of India in Chandrabani near Dehradun,  many images flashed through my mind. I remembered the halcyon mid-eighties when the Institute functioned from the Forest Research Institute campus. I recollected the raucous times the 1993 Nandadevi expedition guys had at WII from the sheer joy of having visited the remotest wild area in the country. Now I was back, this time to attend a five day Training Course on Wetland Conservation and Management from 27 to 31 Jan 2009. I had learnt of this module from the institute’s website. My superiors were understanding and generous and so, here was I.

By virtue of having attended the first Army course on Wildlife in 1985, I consider the WII to be one of my alma maters. Sure, I knew what wetlands were! Bharatpur, Bhitarkanika and the like. Me, I came from CME Pune to get a few pointers about our four lakes. And to have a lot of fun!! I love being around hard-core wildlifers. They are a breed apart!

The Wildlife Institute of India

The Wildlife Institute immediately strikes you as different from the archetypical govt scientific institutions. You’d probably imagine – large, dusty, brown, shoebox, full of babus. What you get instead is great architecture, small, green, clean, full of intelligent dedicated people. They have a good library, wi fi, a nature walk (its true!) and a green campus adjoining the Sal forests of the Siwaliks. Most importantly, a vast fount of knowledge and experience rests in the minds of scientists who worked there.

I had applied for the training as a ‘lateral entry’ from the Army and the Dr PR Sinha the Director was kind enough to include a ‘fauji’ amonst the foresters and naturalists attending the capsule. But nature-lovers soon connect, and I did NOT feel like a fish out of water – instead I felt that I came home. The beginning started with a lecture on what was a wetland. I was surprised to learn that the best and most accurate definition of a wetland was given by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

The Wetland Conservation batch with the instructors! Final day after receiving certificates.

We were a motley crew, comprising a handful of forestors, some foreign students, some eager young WWF field workers and a jaded armyman in the form of yours truly. This led to an excellent atmosphere, leg-pulling and mutual sharing of experiences.

The thread of instruction very soon plunged into details but since it illustrated profusely on slides and the teachers bantered with us, we were soon at home with terms such as “ramsar convention’ and ‘palustrine’ and ‘mangal’. Now its not my aim to reproduce what was taught there but I learnt that our lakes were not lakes but a wetland and were value-added by the presence of a heronry.

The most amazing things I learnt were that wetlands are very critical biodiversity hotspots and rate higher than all types of forests. They are more important in that an acre of wetland has 6 to 8 times more productivty than agriculture and more than that of normal forests. We were told the intriguing stories of wetlands such as Bhitarkanika, Mannar, Chilika, Asan, Wular Lake and high altitude wetlands across the Himalayas.

The WII overfed us with an official dinner and two more official high teas to boot. They gave us a lot of goodies, including the WII bag, tie, numerous CDs and best of all – a copy of Kasmiericzak’s (I give up I just cant spell or pronounce him right) book on Indian Birds!

Well, since I’m plugging the WII, I think I’ll mention that they did have one drawback. Yours truly was unable to show off his blog as as all blogs had been firewalled for security reasons! That small hitch apart, I felt really good to be there. We were not talked down to and very hospitably treated which is much more than one can say about other places today.

Overheard in the class! – ”Are storks edible?”

The Walking Tree

It has been pointed out by discerning eyes that what I have is a collection of articles and not a pure blog.  The articles are too crafted – they appear to have been made for elsewhere and cobbled together here for my purposes, whatever they may be. Also, they are too long so that what I have is a blong and not a blog, so to say. When these observations emanate from my best friend and harshest critic, I can only do as my dog Aslan does – that is lie on my back and paddle my arms and legs and give guilty looks.

So here is a ‘blog’ type post whatever that means.

Today, my good friend, M…. (let him be M, it sounds mysterious and I get the credit for crediting him without actually crediting him, and to his credit, he does not complain. Incredible, I know, but true.)

Ouch,eek, ok, no more punning, enough ear-tweaking; enough already!

Anyways… M showed me an amazing report – a tree that walked and continues to do so after many decades. Its not something new having been reported almost a decade ago, but new to me.

See

http://www.india-today.com/itoday/20010115/offtrack.shtml

I’ve always felt that trees have had something mysterious and deep about them, that is why I have a fetish for banyans, amongst other things. Trust a mango, a tree not normally used to perambulation, to come up with a way to overcome the limitations nature has placed on it with only nature’s tools at its disposal.

If you would like to read more about trees that walk, Google on…..

For those who like wordplay or pundits, I recommend V’s esoteric and alliterative dialogue in ”V for Vendetta’.  Too lazy to google?  Here it is…

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film)

or even better still, see the film.